'Bringing the individual back in’ – International Relations and the First Image Subject:

International Relations, ECPR-Workshop, University of St. Gallen, 12-17 April 2011

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Private Individuals in International Relations:

Conceptualizing Social Entrepreneurs as a New Type of Actor

Abstract

Private individuals like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, rock star Bono or micro-credit pioneer

Muhammad Yunus have become significant global players. The term ‘social

entrepreneurship’ points to their transformative role and meets with a young trans-disciplinary

field of research. Scholars identify people who provide examples of the kind of impact that

individuals can have within a globalized world (and how such impact may be achieved). The

emergence and increasing number of private individuals in IR is a simple fact. In IR research,

however, there have only been loose and disputed attempts to bring the individual back in. In

this context, the paper conceptualizes social entrepreneurs (SEs) as a new, exclusive type of

actor by combining SE and IR research.

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Dr. Lena Partzsch

Social-Ecological Research Group GETIDOS

University of Greifswald

Soldmannstr. 23, 17489 Greifswald/Germany, phone +49-3834 864677

eMail: lena.partzsch@uni-greifswald.de

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1. Introduction

When 40 US billionaires committed to voluntarily donate at least 50 per cent of their net

worth to philanthropy in August 2010, they received a great deal of attention. Among them

were the investor Warren Buffet and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Individuals from around

the world are increasingly giving to projects serving the public good beyond their home

country. Their increasing significance in terms of material as well as ideational contributions

has been widely recognized. The term ‘social entrepreneurship’ points to the transformative

role of individuals and meets with a young trans-disciplinary field of research (Mair et al.

2006; Nicholls 2008; Ziegler 2009). What is social entrepreneurship and why should IR care

about it?

Social entrepreneurs (SEs) are private agents who tackle problems of public concern,

including issues of IR. In this paper, I differentiate between SEs in a wide sense and in a

narrow sense. Private donors and celebrities are individuals who use their material resources

and publicity to take agency on behalf of others by pursuing persistent (social, ecological,

economic) problems. I consider them to be SEs in a wide sense. SEs in a narrower sense are

individuals whose social impact is neither based on wealth nor on publicity (at least before

their success) but simply on their personal commitment to a new idea of how to improve

society. Their increasing relevance is closely linked to the emergence of private authority in

global governance (Bruehl et al. 2001; Hall and Biersteker 2002). Research on private

authority so far has been focused on the emergence of new complex actors: (1) civil society

organizations (CSOs) with public aims and (2) transnational corporations (TNCs) with private

self-interests (e.g. Fuchs 2005; Partzsch 2007). This categorization, however, neglects that

private individuals who participate in international negotiations often face different

constraints than state delegates. Corporative top-down actors act to a large extent on behalf of

the individuals on the top, and not vice versa.

Such private entrepreneurs have become donors and now, in a similar attempt, search for

individuals who take agency on behalf of others and pursue public goals (such as poverty

eradication or environmental protection) with “entrepreneurial zeal” and “the courage to

innovate.”1

1 http://www.schwabfound.org/sf/SocialEntrepreneurs/Whatisasocialentrepreneur/index.htm, accessed 8 September 2010.

International (non-governmental) organizations like the Skoll Foundation (formed

by Jeffrey Skoll, founder of eBay), the Schwab Foundation (formed by Klaus Schwab,

founder of the World Economic Forum), and Ashoka (formed by Bill Drayton, see below)

support SEs in a narrow sense. They award single individuals who have already been

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successful in a local or regional context, help them scale up their ideas and in this way

establish SEs as a new type of global player. They create the image of charismatic heroes who

provide examples of the kind of impact that individuals can have within a globalized world

(and how such impact may be achieved). The goal is an Everyone a Changemaker world,

where private individuals are able to solve any social – local, national or even international –

problem (Bornstein 2004; Drayton 2006).

The most prominent example of such a SE is Muhammad Yunus, whose idea of micro-credits

has had transformational impact on the financial markets of developing countries and serves

as reference for international organizations and programs such as the UN International Year

of Microcredit 2005 (Grenier 2008; Stein 2008, 2; Ziegler 2009, 8). There are many more SEs

in diverse policy fields. John Bird founded The Big Issue, a street newspaper sold by

homeless people and designed to allow them to earn a wage (Dacin et al. forthcoming, 12-13).

The paper is produced and sold in several countries and, according to UN-HABITAT, has

improved the living conditions in urban centers around the world.2

This paper deals with the emergence of individual global players such as Gates, Bono, Yunus

and Bird. It conceptualizes SEs as a new exclusive type of actor in IR. I am less concerned

with the endpoint of change processes provoked by the SEs; I am interested instead in a

mechanism of change – social entrepreneurs and their strategies – which has research value

regardless of the often controversial type of endpoint achieved by the change.

2. Social Entrepreneurs

Social entrepreneurship has provoked a specific field of research, which is grounded in

different disciplines. While scholars of economics and business studies are in the majority, the

discourse on SEs is also inspired by disciplines like sociology, history and anthropology (see

table 1). These diverse perspectives lead to many definitions of social entrepreneurship. From

a political science perspective, I define SEs as private agents who tackle problems of public

concern and cause transformational change (Cho 2006; Stein 2008). SEs are people who take

agency on behalf of the public without being explicitly mandated to do so, including donors

and celebrities. Apart from a few exceptions (e.g. Easterly 2006, chapter 11; Mair et al. 2006),

SEs are defined as single persons – who in practice and research are usually explicitly named.

SEs in a narrower sense are people who address social problems with innovative solutions and

entrepreneurial means. Views differ, however, on what can be considered an innovative

2 http://www.unhabitat.org/content.asp?typeid=19&catid=379&id=324, accessed 25 February 2011.

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solution: should it be a fundamentally new idea or only an idea applied to a specific context?

Also, what can be considered entrepreneurial - for instance, do SEs need to (re-) finance their

activities through market sales or may they (also) receive public means.

Table 1: The trans-disciplinary research field of social entrepreneurship Research discipline

Scholars Percentage (number)

Economics and business studies

Beth Battle Anderson, James E. Austin, Gordon M. Bloom, Jerr Boschee, Anne Clifford, J. Gregory Dees, Geoff Desa, Sarah E. A. Dixon, Bill Drayton, Doug Foster, Holm Friebe, Paola Grenier, Pamela Hartigan, Helen Haugh, Daniel Hjorth, Kai Hockerts, Suresh Kotha, Michal Kravcik, Herman B. Leonard, Johanna Mair, Ignasí Martí, Geoff Mulgan, Alex Nicholls, Ernesto Noboa, Francesco Perrini, Jeffrey A. Robinson, Christian Seelos, Clodia Vurro, Jane Wei-Skillern, Rowena Young, Muhammad Yunus

69% (31)

Sociology Ion Bogdan Vasi, Eva Illouz, Ezequiel Reficco, Richard Schwedberg

9% (4)

History Rob Boddice, Krzysztof Stanowski 4,5% (2) Anthropology Alex Jacobs, Kate Ganly 4,5% (2) Others

Philipp Albers (cultural studies), Albert Hyunbae Cho (political science), Jed Emerson (unknown disciplinary background), Judy Korn (educational science), Sally Osberg (literature studies), Rafael Ziegler (philosophy)

13% (6)

Sources: Own compilation based on authors of volumes by Mair et al. 2006, Nicholls 2008

and Ziegler 2009.

Muhammad Yunus serves as a prominent example of a SE to many scholars (Grenier 2008,

131; Stein 2008, 2; Ziegler 2009, 8). Yunus founded the Grameen Bank, which provides

credits of very small amounts and allows poor people to access the financial sector. In March

2011, the central bank of Bangladesh dismissed him from his post at Grameen Bank, saying

he had been wrongly reappointed. However, through his efforts, he has transformed social

realities first in his home country Bangladesh, now worldwide. In 2006 Yunus and the

Grameen Bank received the Nobel Peace Prize. While the bank first got international donor

support, it now refinances itself by loan repayments and accrued interest. Today the bank has

more money in deposits than it lends to its 4.5 million borrowers without collateral. It lends

out half a billion dollars a year, in loans averaging under 200 US$, and maintains a 99 per

cent repayment record (Yunus 2008, 44). The Grameen Bank has inspired international

organizations such as the World Bank and the UN, as we can see in the UN’s International

Year of Microcredit 2005. Moreover, it cooperates with TNCs on specific credits. For

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instance, Grameen Phone is a joint venture between the Grameen Bank and Telenore, a

Norwegian telecompany, where customers receive credits from the Bank to conclude mobile

phone contracts (Muhammad 2009, 36-37). In this way, Yunus and Grameen address the lack

of communication infrastructure and perform a task formerly considered to be public.

John Bird founded the street newspaper The Big Issue, which allows homeless people to earn

a wage instead of begging, thereby changing their public role and perception (from beggar to

vendor) and helping them to reintegrate into mainstream society. The Big Issue was first sold

in London in 1991; Bird has now expanded across the UK and has lent The Big Issue

trademark to SEs throughout the world. The Big Issue received the UN Habitat Scroll of

Honour Award in 2004 for improving the living conditions in urban centers around the world.

The street newspaper refinances itself through advertisements and sales. For scaling his idea,

Bird received donations from TNCs – The Body Shop in particular (Dacing et al.

forthcoming, 13). Profit made by the newspaper is invested in The Big Issue Foundation,

which exists to support vendors in gaining control of their lives by tackling the various issues

that lead to homelessness.

SEs like Yunus or Bird can serve as role models who take social responsibility. Yunus

himself speaks of social entrepreneurs as a new type of person

“who is not interested in profit maximization. He is totally committed to make a

difference in the world. He is socially-objective driven. He wants to give a better

chance in life to other people. He wants to achieve his objective through creating and

supporting sustainable business and enterprises. Such businesses may or may not earn

profit, but like any other business they must not incur losses.” (Yunus found in Ziegler

2009, 8).

Most scholars of global governance distinguish between two types of non-state actors –

NGOs as civil society actors and TNCs (e.g. Fuchs 2005; Hummel 2001). Transnational

corporations (TNCs) are complex, corporative actors, which own or control production or

provide services in more than one nation-state (Beisheim et al. 1999, 305). They typically aim

at maximizing their profit, or rather their shareholder value. TNCs tend to be organized

hierarchically, i.e. there is top-down leadership. Corporations are hence able to act

independently from the interests and preferences of the majority of the individuals of whom

they are composed. This allows them a high degree of efficiency and effectiveness – for

example in political negotiations (Scharpf 2000, 105-106). Non-governmental organizations

(NGOs) are commonly used as a synonym for civil society organizations (Hummel 2001, 22;

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Social Entrepreneurship

State

Karns and Mingst 2004, 212). They can either have an aggregated (bottom-up) or corporate

(top-down) structure. NGOs are neither assigned by the state nor are they part of the

institutional political systems (like political parties); however, they run political activities that

are related to institutional politics. While NGOs – at least in a textbook case – pursue public

goals, TNCs are driven by their private self-interest and profit-maximization.

State, business and civil society actors can be broadbrushly assigned by their resources –

respectively, taxes, commercial activities and donations (Linder and Vaillancourt Rosenau

2003, 11). Forasmuch as SEs finance themselves through commercial activities like business

companies do (in addition to donations) while pursuing public goals at the same time, they

can be considered a hybrid of both types of non-state actors, business and civil society. Of

course, a few NGOs also run commercial activities (Oxfam with its charity shops that sell

second-hand clothes, or Greenpeace with its merchandizing products); however, for these

NGOs, market activities have only a supplemental character in order to finance their advocacy

work in political processes. SEs try to more directly impact societies through their market

activities “and sidestep these processes in a monological effort to circumvent grid-locked

institutional politics” (Cho 2006, 53). For instance, the Grameen Bank has direct impact on

financial markets and the poor, instead of doing political advocacy work in the name of the

poor.

Chart 1: Social Entrepreneurship between state, market and civil society

Most scholars locate the term ‘social entrepreneur’ in the setting of New Labour, either

explicitly (Cho 2006; Grenier 2008 and 2009) or implicitly (e.g. Drayton 2006; Mair et al.

2006). Accordingly, the term has mainly been shaped in the UK (Grenier 2009, 178-181). It is

part of third-way rhetoric (Giddens 1998) that tries to bring together economic and social

welfare (and has generated such dichotomous word combinations as social entrepreneur or

collaborative competition). Sometimes social entrepreneurship is also declared to be an even

further variant of state-market relation, or fourth stage (Goldsmith 2010): after public-private

Civil society Business

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partnerships failed, the profit as well as non-profit driven private sector should unfold its

potential to bring about social change. The market is the center of attention again, while a

fundamental dichotomy of social and economic benefit continues to be denied. Social

entrepreneurship is considered to represent a more ethically and socially integrating

capitalism (Dacin et al. forthcoming, 3). In this spirit, Yunus argues that social

entrepreneurship is a new variant of capitalism:

“It is time to move away from a narrow interpretation of capitalism and broaden the

concept of the market by giving full recognition to social business entrepreneurs. Once

this is done, social business entrepreneurs can flood the market and make it work for

social goals as efficiently as it does for personal goals.” (Yunus 2008, 41-42).

There is little research done that goes beyond examining SEs as such and linking them with

other discourses (Dacin et al. forthcoming, 3; Mair et al. 2006, 2). Explanations and

conceptualizations of SEs are predominantly normative with regard to what would be

desirable (Dacin et al. forthcoming, 3). Empirical studies are mostly anecdotal and targeted to

support a specific initiative (Mair et al. 2006, 2). Against this background and facing the

current growth of research and public discourse on social entrepreneurship, SE research

should urgently be linked to further research disciplines (see also Dacin et al. forthcoming, 5).

In the following I will try to do this by classifying SEs as a new type of actor in IR.

3. Bringing the individual back in international relations

Although most IR scholars deny any explanatory power to the first image (Waltz 1959/2001),

individuals have not been neglected throughout. Within IR research, there are basically three

concepts that refer to political actions of individuals: leadership, citizenship und

entrepreneurship (Stein 2008, 4). With reference to the principal-agent approach, leaders who

take part in international negotiations can be described as agents. In the case of state

delegates, citizens’ communities constitute their principals. Entrepreneurs, like leaders, take

agency on behalf of others but, different from state delegates, they are not explicitly hired by

citizens (or those affected) (see chart 2).

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Citizens or those affected (principal)

Chart 2: Individuals in international relations

3.1. Leadership by state representatives

In political science ‘leadership’ refers to people in power, be they high officials such as

elected officeholders, administrators in government agencies or high-ranking politicians such

as party leaders. When asking what a leader is, scholars disaggregate complex actors and pay

attention to individuals in guiding positions. The central question is “Who negotiates in IR?”

In IR research, leadership is normally not assigned to individuals but to complex actors:

pioneer states or special international organizations. There have been only a few attempts “to

bring the individual back in” (Young 1991, 281). In such an attempt, Young explicitly defines

individual leadership against the background of regime theory:

“Leadership (…) refers to the actions of individuals who endeavor to solve or

circumvent the collective action problems that plague the efforts of parties seeking to

reap joint gains in processes of institutional bargaining.” (Young 1991, 285; see also

Young 1999)

According to Young, regime negotiations can only be successful if certain types of

individuals come together and find agreement. The individuals he means are agents who are

imbued with authority to act on behalf of a collective or corporate actor, normally

representatives of national governments. Young describes three types of individual

leadership: structural, entrepreneurial and intellectual. The structural leader tries to bring

material resources into bargaining leverage and to pressure other negotiators to agree to his or

her suggestions. In contrast, the entrepreneurial leader has negotiation skills that are similar to

a mediator (but with his or her own interests) in setting certain issues, formulating

compromise and building up acceptance. The intellectual leader as a thought leader provides

the ideational basis for negotiations.

Leader (agents) Entrepreneurs (agents without principal)

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According to Young, individual leadership does not increase but preconditions the success of

international negotiations. As an illustrative case, he provides the example of negotiations on

the reduction of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs): during the mid-1980s, when the dangers

associated with stratospheric ozone depletion were still subject to considerable scientific

controversy, American negotiators tried without success to induce Britain, France, Germany

and others to accept plans for a comprehensive reduction in the use of CFCs. The result was

the 1985 Vienna convention, a framework agreement containing little substantive content. By

1987, however, new scientific evidence had strengthened the case for restricting all major

uses of CFCs and Dupont, as the largest producer of CFCs, was convinced. According to

Young, structural and intellectual leadership came together at this stage and Richard

Benedick, negotiating on behalf of the US, was able to turn the tide. His threats to restrict

access to the US market led to the acceptance of across-the-board cuts in the production and

consumption of CFCs. He had major influence on the negotiations to the Montreal protocol,

which considerably concretized the Vienna agreement.

Putnam (1988) points to the logic of two-level games: there are negotiations within each

entity (state, international organization, etc.) about the position that the entity is going to take

in international negotiations; the initial negotiations make up the first level, the international

negotiations make up the second. Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that

parties regularly differ in their ability to focus on specific instances of institutional bargaining.

While Young (1991, 285) emphasizes that much depends on the individual negotiator and his

or her capacity to mediate between the two levels, as well as to strategically deploy the other

level in each case, Andrew Moravcsik (1999) contradicts this assumption. He shows for the

five most important treaty-emending negotiations of the European Community (before 1999)

that the interventions of ‘supranational entrepreneurs’ were generally late, redundant, futile

and sometimes even counterproductive. According to Moravcsik, only a two-level bargaining

theory attentive to the dynamics of states-society relations, rather than a theory focused on

interstate coordination problems, explains the (intermittent and rare) variation in the

effectiveness of supranational entrepreneurship. Tora Skodvin and Steinar Andresen (2006,

25) offer a kind of compromise by singling out entrepreneurial leadership as primarily

associated with individuals. According to them (along with Young), this is a leadership mode

in which personal leadership capabilities and skills constitute crucial determinants of success.

With regard to the comparison of political leaders and private individuals in IR, we need to

realize that the rules of the two-level game significantly restrict the leeway of negotiators who

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represent a complex entity and who negotiate on the account of others, compared to those

(private) individual negotiators who are only accountable to themselves.

3.2. Citizens and those affected If we disaggregate complex actors of IR, we first see individuals who are political leaders and

participate in international negotiations. Second, there are the individuals who are represented

by the leaders (see chart 2). In the Westphalian model of the sovereign nation-state, these

individuals are nation-state citizens. However, while the nation-state continues to be the

central political community, it is losing significance. With processes of economic and cultural

globalization, the nation-state decreasingly shapes people’s identity and does not necessarily

serve as the only political community anymore. We need to raise the question of (new)

political sovereign or, put differently, the group question “Who are we?” (Nye 2008, 46).

Individuals consider themselves decreasingly as national, and increasingly as world, citizens

or cosmopolites (Held 2010; Stein 2008). At the same time, new transnational networks of

those affected emerge and serve as communities of political reference, independent from the

nation-state (Wolf 2002, 42-45).

International politics is decreasingly organized according to territorial, and increasingly to

sectoral, regimes and negotiation systems (Wolf 2002, 42-45). International cooperation has

generated more than 200 environmental agreements and various institutional structures for

monitoring, enforcing and strengthening them (Carter 2007, 242); these agreements are

increasingly negotiated and adopted by non-state actors (Bruehl et al. 2001; Partzsch 2007).

The World Commission on Dams, for example, brought together state and non-state

representatives to negotiate new guidelines for large-scale dam constructions (Dingwerth

2005). The demos or principal in these cases can be defined by “their awareness of being

affected by its decisions” (Wolf 2002, 44). Those who make the decisions are thereby

postulated to be identical with those who are affected by them (Wolf 2002, 43). Affected

individuals quasi replace individual citizens and constitute communities based on a functional

rather than territorial differentiation. In each particular case, this replacement provokes

questions. Those NGOs or networks participating in international negotiations are not always

accountable to the people whose interests they claim to represent (Holzscheiter 2010).

There are only a few democratic models that try to complement the Westphalian model of

sovereign nation-states by consensual processes of such transnational, functional demoi (Wolf

2002, 44; Stein 2008, 6). Among these is the deliberative supra-nationalism that – in contrast

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to cosmopolitan democracy – denies any possibility of shifting structures of the nation-state to

the international level (Joerges/Neyer 1997; Schmalz-Bruns 1999). It does not take a

perspective that aims for an institutionalized world politics; it basically assumes that the

political sphere which exists in parallel. The World Social Forum, which has taken place

annually since 2001, impressively symbolizes a successful networking of civil society groups

across borders and their capability to at least show alternative ways of creating globalization

(Brunnengraeber 2005, 342). A global civil society and sphere of politically involved

individuals has emerged (Kaldor 2003; Rucht 1999).

Table 2: Leaders, citizens and entrepreneurs - examples

Individuals in IR Example

Leader Richard Benedick negotiating the Montreal Protocol on behalf of the US

Citizens and/or those affected US citizens and/or those affected by ozone depletion; citizens of conflict states and/or medical personnel and those wounded in war

Entrepreneur Swiss banker Henry Dunant whose ideas inspired the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1863 and the 1864 Geneva Convention

3.3. Norm and policy entrepreneur

If individual citizens take action not based on self-interest but personal commitment to

improve the life of others, we can conceptualize them as entrepreneurs. Martha Finnemore

and Kathryn Sikkink (1998) introduced the term ‘norm entrepreneur’ (or ‘moral

entrepreneur’). These individual entrepreneurs are considered to play a significant role in the

process of international norm formation: „Norms do not appear out of thin air; they are

actively built by agents having strong notions about appropriate or desirable behavior in their

community” (Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 896).3

3 The term ‘norm entrepreneurship’ originally refers to individuals but is also applied to complex actors in IR research, e.g. to TNCs that diffuse moral ideas and values through corporate social responsibility (CSR) measures (e.g. Flohr et al. 2010). The same holds true for policy entrepreneurs that are considered to be NGOs (e.g. Huitema/Meijerink 2009).

Like Young (1991) and Skodvin/Andresen

(2006, 25), Finnemore/Sikkink (1998, 893) emphasize the role that individual actors play in

the two-level game, the two-level norm game: only because of entrepreneurial efforts,

domestic norms become international norms. Different from Young’s leaders, the norm

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entrepreneurs are private individuals, not state delegates.4

We face a similar situation with regard to policy entrepreneurs (e.g. Baumgartner/Jones 2002;

Huitema/Meijerink 2009; Kingdon 1984/2003; Mintrom 1997, also called public

entrepreneurs, Ostrom 1965). While norm entrepreneurs deal with the formation of norms and

moral values, policy entrepreneurs provoke significant policy change. Policy entrepreneurs

are individuals either situated within the political system, such as state servants or elected

representatives, or people from outside, such as NGOs and the sciences (Huitema/Meijerink

2009, 371; Mintron 1997, 741). If they are state servants or elected representatives, they are

identical to the political leaders described above. Different from Young’s entrepreneurial

leaders, who represent a complex entity, policy entrepreneurs basically represent their

personal ideas and goals for which they try to bring about political change and that may

considerably differ from the entity they work in. Especially at an early stage of their efforts,

they might not represent common perceptions.

In contrast to the leaders described

above, entrepreneurs do not act on account of others but, at least to a large extent, act on self-

account.

An example of a norm entrepreneur given by Finnemore and Sikkink (1998, 896-7), is the

Swiss banker Henry Dunant, among others. Prevailing norms that medical personnel and

those wounded in war be treated as neutrals and noncombatants are clearly traceable to his

efforts. After a transformative personal experience at the battle of Solferino in 1859, Dunant

helped found an organization to promote this cause (what became the International

Committee of the Red Cross) through an international treaty (the first Geneva Convention).

Finnemore and Sikkink (1998, 897) also name Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony

in the US and Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Emmeline Pankhurst in England as norm

entrepreneurs who took the initial leadership to the international campaign for women’s

suffrage.

There are some indications that norm as well as policy entrepreneurs are of particular

relevance in the beginning of a change process at the international level: Finnemore and

Sikkink (1998) describe three phases of international norm formation, the norm life cycle.

Norm entrepreneurs have the most significant role to play in the first phase of norm

emergence when they need to convince a critical mass of states, so-called norm leaders. They

call attention to issues or even create issues, in a sense framing, by using language that names,

interprets and dramatizes (Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 897). The new norms never enter a

4 Not explicitly, but following the illustrative cases.

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vacuum and entrepreneurs need to respect existing norms in order to be successful (although

to challenge existing logics of appropriateness, they may need to be explicitly inappropriate,

Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 897-8). For instance, the Red Cross had to persuade military

commanders that the protection of wounded was compatible with their war aims

(Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 899). In a second phase, the norm cascade, convinced states need

to persuade further states. The aim is that norms are internalized by actors and achieve a

taken-for-granted quality that makes conformance possible in the third stage, norm

internalization.

Similar to what Young (1991, 293) describes with regard to leaders, Finnemore and Sikkink

(1998, 898) do not assume that entrepreneurs are driven by material self-interests. To the

contrary, they see them as acting out of empathy, altruism and idealism: „Ideational

commitment is the main motivation when entrepreneurs promote norms or ideas because they

believe in the ideals and values embodied in the norms, even though the pursuit of the norms

may have no effect on their well-being” (Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 898). The motives of

leaders, receiving accolades from their peers in particular (Young 1991, 293), are used by

entrepreneurs especially in the second phase when states accept norms, among other reasons,

because they want others to think well of them (Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 903).

On the one hand, IR scholars assign international norm formation and policy change to

particular individuals; on the other hand, they also realize the need for organizational

platforms, which are sometimes only founded in order to support specific norms, as in the

case of many NGOs (Greenpeace, the Red Cross, etc.). “Entrepreneurs may act individually,

but often they create organizations or networks for propagating their ideas” (Elgstroem 2000,

459-60, similar in Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 899; Huitema/Meijerink 2009, 376). The

organization that offers a platform to the individuals also influences them by prescribing a

certain way of using information, knowledge and expertise (Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 899;

Huitema/Meijerink 2009, 376).

In summary, in IR the individual appears classically at first as a representative of a complex

actor (agent) and, second, as the smallest unit of a political community of citizens or those

affected (principal). Third, IR scholars identify individual entrepreneurs who are not

mandated by anyone but have their own private agendas of how to address social problems.

Different from SE research, IR scholars conceptualize these entrepreneurs in terms of their

influence on (international) political or norm-setting processes. Norm and policy

entrepreneurs are not considered to circumvent institutional politics. This is a major

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difference from SEs who are conceptualized to more directly impact and change society

through the market (while being anything but apolitical as they tackle problems of public

concern, see Cho 2006; Stein 2008). Besides, IR research has only dealt with individual

entrepreneurs as an exception. To the contrary, SE research describes individual agency as a

widespread phenomenon that deserves to be recognized and fostered. In the following, I bring

together these two strengths of research by conceptualizing SEs as a new type of actor in IR.

4. Multiplication of private individuals in international relations

We have seen that private entrepreneurs are nothing new at the global level and that they have

been recognized to a certain extent by IR research. However, the number of entrepreneurs

with international norm, policy or social causes has multiplied in the last two decades and

their impact has largely increased compared to the examples provided by Finnemore/Sikkink,

which date back a century. Their escalating relevance is closely linked to processes of

economic globalization. Individual businessmen who only recently made their fortune in a

globalized economy, such as Gates and Skoll, make up a first category of private individuals

in IR. These donors’ activities are based on their material resources. Celebrities, who receive

attention because of their publicity, form a second category. I consider both, donors and

celebrities, as SEs in a wide sense. Through international support organizations like Ashoka

and the Skoll Foundation, these people work towards an Everyone a Changemaker world;

whereas those people who are neither rich nor famous (at least before their success), but

mainly driven by a personal cause and a new idea of how to improve society, work towards

becoming influential global players. These people make up a third category, and I consider

them as SEs in a narrow sense.

4.1. Donors, celebrities and social entrepreneurs in a narrow sense

Individuals emerge in IR on the basis of their material resources, their celebrity and their

personal commitment. Aside from George Soros, Warren Buffet and the Gates have probably

received the most attention as international philanthropists whose relevance for IR is clearly

based on their material resources. These donors belong to the richest people of the world (see

table 3). With a start-up capital of 94 million US$, Bill Gates set up a foundation in 1994, first

named only after himself and later renamed also after his wife to “Bill and Melinda Gates

Foundation.” The couple has invested more than 28 billion US$ of their private net worth into

14

the foundation. Buffet announced in 2006 to prospectively give 99 per cent of his net worth of

currently 47 billion US$ to the Gates Foundation.5

Table 3: Forbes List of the World's Billionaires

Rank Name Citizenship Age Net worth

($bil)

Residence

1 Carlos Slim Helu &

family

Mexico 70 53.5 Mexico

2 William Gates III United States 54 53.0 United States

3 Warren Buffett United States 79 47.0 United States

4 Mukesh Ambani India 52 29.0 India

5 Lakshmi Mittal India 59 28.7 United

Kingdom

6 Lawrence Ellison United States 65 28.0 United States

7 Bernard Arnault France 61 27.5 France

8 Eike Batista Brazil 53 27.0 Brazil

9 Amancio Ortega Spain 74 25.0 Spain

10 Karl Albrecht Germany 90 23.5 Germany

(…)

Source: www.forbes.com/lists/2010/10/billionaires-2010_The-Worlds-

Billionaires_Rank.html, 20 January 2010.

Having first a clear priority on the two issues of global health and community needs in the

Pacific Northwest, the Gates Foundation has constantly amplified its scope of activities.

While the Foundation first gave grants to public libraries in the US to provide free computer

and internet access, the Foundation now runs the Global Libraries program in order to narrow

the digital divide on a worldwide scale. Where the money goes to in particular depends

originally on the interests and experiences of the Gates. For instance, after the Gates visited

infants with life-threatening malaria in Mozambique in 2003, they announced to give 168

million US$ to the Manhiça Health Research Centre in southern Mozambique (compared to

5 http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/0,1518,710192,00.html, 8 September 2010.

15

200 million US$ anti-malarial spending by Mozambique government). The Foundation’s

efforts in malaria vaccine research have continually intensified since then.6 This flexibility

and spontaneous capability to act marks a major difference in IR between private individuals

and representative negotiators (leaders) who are bound to instructions of their national

governments. In addition, their material background allows the Gates to directly improve

social realities on the ground, like narrowing the digital divide or improving health services in

African countries. The Gates’ Global Health Program, with an over-all budget of 13 billion

US$ since 1994 (see chart), does not necessarily outrange the World Health Organization

(WHO), with its annual budget of close to 5 billion US$ in 20097; however, the Gates can

potentially prove the interpretation by SE research of entrepreneurs bypassing grid-locked

institutional politics to be true (in fact, they started to cooperate with the WHO). Private

donors like the Gates do not need to influence state actors like the health ministry in the first

place, which gives them an advantage over conventional NGOs and norm or policy

entrepreneurs, previously analyzed by IR research.8

Chart 3: The Gates Foundation’s global investments (1994-2010)

Source: www.gatesfoundation.org/about/Pages/foundation-fact-sheet.aspx, 30 October 2010.

6 http://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/Pages/foundation-timeline.aspx, 8 September 2010, and The Economist 25 September 2003 (http://www.economist.com/node/2084799, accessed 25 February 2011). 7 http://www.cfr.org/public-health-threats/world-health-organization/p20003, 25 February 2011. 8 To the contrary, politicians try to influence the Gates Foundation. For instance, Joaquim Alberto Chissano, former president of Mozambique, has joined the foundation’s Global Development Program as a program advisory panel member in 2009.

16

As private donors can impact societies to a large extent independently from institutional

politics, some SE scholars discuss whether private commitment is capable of replacing state

agency (Stein 2008, 21; Cho 2006, 54). The Gates Foundation’s annual budget of 1.5 billion

US$ in 2007 is comparable to the aid provided by small nation-states like Denmark, $2.56

billion (Stein 2008, 22). Since its formation in 1994, the Gates Foundation spent more than 16

billion US$ for social projects outside the US (see chart 3). In this regard, however, we should

not neglect that the accumulation of financial assets owned by people like Buffet, Gates or

Soros is linked to processes of economic globalization and a neoliberal reorganization that are

not resulting from a weakness of the nation-state. To the contrary, these processes are bound

to the state and would not be possible without it (Brand et al. 2000, 140). If donations to

foundations are tax deductions like in Germany, every multi-billion donation implies a loss of

a multi-billion-tax income to the state. The nation-states weaken themselves by disclaiming

tax income.

Further, we should consider that private individuals do not take philanthropist actions in a

legal vacuum. If the Gates take action in Mozambique, they need to observe the national law.

Moreover, different from NGOs, which may depend on political support, foundations that

place their capital in stocks depend on the market. The Gates Foundation in particular came

under criticism for their silent investments in controversial oil and chemical corporations.

This criticism might also apply to Klaus Schwab and Jeffrey Skoll who launch foundations in

support of SEs but invest their foundations’ capital in the conventional market. Ashoka

Germany only recently changed to the GLS Bank, a bank operating with an ethical

philosophy based on an anthroposophical initiative (while Ashoka continues to accept money

from conventional banks, see Ashoka 2010, 31).

Conflicts between moral claims and real doings of private individuals are probably even more

controversial with regard to celebrities, my second category of private individuals in IR.

Besides private donors like the Gates, many celebrities have recently appeared on the global

stage. Cooper introduces the term ‘celebrity diplomat,’ which he applies to individuals with

“communications skills, a sense of mission, and some global reach” who “enter into the

official diplomatic and operate through the matrix of complex relationships with state

officials” (Cooper 2008, 7). Oxfam, a NGO fighting against poverty and injustice, has a staff

17

member only dedicated to finding celebrities who as individuals in IR work to support

Oxfam’s goals.9

One of the first world celebrities that engaged for a cause was the French film star Brigitte

Bardot (Nadeau 1996). At the end of the 1970s, Bardot stood up against the Canadian seal

hunt and wearing fur. The fact that she was still posing nude for an ad series of a mink fur

farmers association in 1969 provoked doubts about her motives, which are usually interpreted

as based on self-interest rather than animal welfare. The campaign allowed BB to reposition

herself as the middle-aged woman dedicated to a cause when she had retired from her acting

career.

More recently, Bono, Sting and Bob Geldorf have become the “triumvirate of good

conscious” (Frank 2010). Bob Geldorf rose to prominence as an Irish rock singer in the late

1970s and has become widely recognized for his activism, especially anti-poverty efforts

concerning Africa. Sting became popular as a lead singer of the band The Police and has

established a foundation for rainforest protection and help of the Kayapo, a native people in

Brazil. Bono, vocalist of the Irish rock band U2, has become the most illustrative example of

a celebrity who uses his publicity for political and social causes beyond national borders. He

gets involved with virtually anything. Among his favorite causes are poverty eradication and

third-world debt relief; for instance, he joined the Jubilee 2000 campaign for third-world debt

relief (see chart 4).

Celebrities use their publicity to direct media attention to social and political causes. The

Jubilee 2000 campaign for debt relief highly benefitted from Bono’s support. Celebrities

shake hands with politicians and, in some cases, join the game in diplomatic back rooms

(Busby 2007; Cooper 2008, 8). In September 2000, Bono met with US Senator Jesse Helms

and convinced the conservative head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to support

developing country debt relief (Busby 2007). Bono further claims to be responsible for the

fact that the U.S. Bush government tripled aid for Africa after he had travelled to Africa with

Paul O’Neill, then US Secretary of the Treasury (Frank 2010). In 2002, after the Jubilee 2000

campaign, Bono moved to establish his own organization, DATA. DATA stands for Debt,

AIDS, Trade, Africa and aims to help focus public attention on how to beat AIDS and

extreme poverty in Africa by working with politicians, the media and celebrities.10

9 http://www.portfolio.com/careers/job-of-the-week/2008/07/27/Celebrity-Wrangler-Lyndsay-Cruz, 30 October 2010.

Justifying

this obviously exclusive approach on the one hand, and conflicts between his moral claims

10 http://data.d202.org/about/faq.html#faq1, 20 February 2011.

18

and his own wealthy lifestyle on the other hand, Bono states: “A poor cannot help the poor”

(found in Frank 2010). Different from donors like Gates, who obviously bypass institutional

politics by giving their net worth to philanthropy and financing social activities on the ground

(besides political advocacy work), celebrities tend to not give their own money. Instead they

use their publicity in order to pressure politicians to increase public spending for the poor.

They speed up (and not circumvent) processes of institutional politics (see chart 4).

- - -

Chart 4: Celebrity diplomacy: Bono talked to then IMF director Horst Koehler in 2000

(Source: Wikipedia, 30 September 2010) while Melinda and Bill Gates take action on the

ground by financing health care in Africa (Source: http://www.faz.net/m/%7B0D11BD56-

DF62-4B0D-BB9C-C824757E14AA%7Dg225_4.jpg, 25 February 2011).

- - -

While agency of private individuals in IR is obviously exclusive in both cases, donors and

celebrities, this is prima facie not the case for SEs like Yunus and Bird, who are the main

people discussed in SE research. At least before their breakthrough, SEs in this narrow sense

can neither rely on considerable material resources like the Gates or Buffet, nor on a celebrity

status like Bono, Sting or Geldorf. It seems that their activities and success are simply based

on their personal commitment to a new idea of how to improve society (micro-credits to

eradicate poverty; street newspapers to improve urban living conditions). However, in the

following I will show that private donors very much stand behind the international success of

such individual SEs. Private entrepreneurs such as Jeffrey Skoll and Klaus Schwab actively

search for and support these individuals who take agency on behalf of others and pursue

public goals. They award single individuals with new ideas and in this way actively create

SEs as a new type of global player.

19

4.2. International support of social entrepreneurs

The largest organization in support of SEs is Ashoka, an US based non-profit NGO. Bill

Drayton founded Ashoka in 1982; since then, Ashoka has assigned more than 2,500

“individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems”11

“Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will

not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry."

all over

the world (see table 3). The organization is closely linked to the management consultancy

McKinsey, a former employer of Drayton. In Germany, for instance, Ashoka uses the

consultancy’s office space and employees work for Ashoka in their sabbatical on a voluntary

basis. Further partners and financiers are especially the Gates Foundation as well as

transnational corporations such as Nike or Citibank. In 2009, Ashoka’s annual budget was 41

million US$ (Ashoka 2010, 31). Ashoka selects SEs on a worldwide scale, offers them

fellowships, consultancy and network support. The knockout criterion in the selection process

is a new idea, hence the claim that social entrepreneurs are innovative for the public (1).

Drayton points out in a very prominent quote that such a new idea should indeed have

transformative impact on society:

12

Besides the new, transformative idea, further criteria for fellow selection are: (2) creativity,

(3) entrepreneurial quality, (4) social impact of the idea, and (5) ethical fiber.

13 If assigned as

a SE, Ashoka fellows receive financial support of 15,000 to 20,000 US$ per year over three

years and ideational support in the form of consultancy and coaching for the rest of their lives.

The money should allow the fellows to retreat from their original jobs and to spend more time

implementing their specific idea.14

In the last decade, social entrepreneurship has attracted the interest of private individuals who

have only recently become significant global players themselves – like Jeffrey Skoll, founder

of eBay, and Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (Dacin et al.

forthcoming, 2; Mair et al. 2006, 3). These new global players have established NGOs and

foundations similar to Ashoka – such as the Skoll Foundation, the Schwab Foundation (whose

board members include Yunus, among others), Echoing Green and the Draper Richards

Foundation. Like Ashoka, they assign and support individuals as SEs committed to a public

11 www.ashoka.org/social_entrepreneur, 25 January 2011. 12 http://www.skoll.com/aboutsocialentrepreneurship/index.asp, accessed 15 March 2011. 13 http://www.ashoka.org/support/criteria, last accessed on 15 October 2009. 14 http://switzerland.ashoka.org/news/releases, 10 November 2010.

20

cause, ranging from river restoration to the empowerment of disabled people to art projects

(see table 3).

Table 3: Support of social entrepreneurs Ashoka Skoll-

Foundation Echoing Green

Swab-Foundation

Draper Richards-Foundation

Number of fellows

2,500 73 450 150 30 NGOs

Number of countries

70 43 40 40 Only US-based NGOs

Type and amount of support

15.000- 20.000 US-$ for three years on average, ideational

Up to one million US-$, special credit conditions, ideational (e.g. invitation to Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship)

60.000 US-$ or 90.000 US-$ for a partnership of two people for two years

Ideational (e.g. invitation to World Economic Forum)

100.000 Euro for three years, ideational

Source: Own compilation based on information from the homepages of the respective

foundations in October 2010.

Their selection criteria sound similar to, and as vague as, those of Ashoka. All of these

organizations have in common an emphasis on the innovative and transformative potential of

SEs for societies (the Skoll Foundation explicitly refers to Drayton’s above quote on its

homepage). According to the Schwab Foundation, SEs combine the characteristics

represented by Virgin founder Richard Branson and Catholic sister Mother Teresa,15 while the

Skoll Foundation puts them in line with Hull-House founder Jane Addams, educational

reformist Maria Montessori and microfinance initiator Muhammad Yunus.16

15 http://www.schwabfound.org/sf/SocialEntrepreneurs/Whatisasocialentrepreneur/index.htm, 7 September 2010.

The Draper

Richards Foundation is the only organization that does not assign individuals but rather NGOs

as SEs, and these NGOs need to be newly founded. The fellows of all the other organizations

must prove to already have a certain success and diffusion of their innovation when applying

for fellowship support. Moreover, the Draper Richards Foundation supports only non-profit

NGOs. All the other organizations not only admit a profit-seeking interest to the SEs, they

16 http://www.skollfoundation.org/aboutsocialentrepreneurship/index.asp, 30 September 2010.

21

even consider commercial activities to be an essential part of social entrepreneurship (through

which social activities are refinanced). Especially the Skoll Foundation, in contrast to the

Richard Draper Foundation, attaches importance to a profit-seeking business model. A further

difference between the Draper Richards Foundation and the other supporters is the former’s

focuses on US-based SEs (which may, however, take transnational action) while the latter

supports SEs from developed as well as developing countries, regardless of their nationality.

My inquiry has not shown any SE who gets support from two different support organizations.

However, it does happen that different individuals from the same organizational platform

receive awards. For instance, Michal Kravčík, Martin Kovác and Eugen Tóth from Slovakia

aim to establish a new water paradigm with a more decentralized infrastructure and

management (opposing large-scale dam construction, discussed by the World Commission on

Dams (WCD)); all three have been individually assigned fellowships for this idea by

Ashoka.17 Kailash Satyarthi has been assigned an Ashoka fellowship for founding Rugmark,

an Indian organization fighting child labor in the carpet industry.18 Nini Smith, based on this

initiative, launched Rugmark Foundation USA to educate consumers and persuade them to

seek out the Rugmark (or now Good Weave) label, and has since become a Skoll fellow (their

efforts are comparable to programs of the International Labor Organization (ILO) against

child labor).19

Fellows of the Skoll Foundation can receive up to one million US$ (so Smith received much

more financial support than Satyarthi).

20 Moreover, the Skoll Foundation supports its fellows

ideationally by allowing them to participate in, among other things, the annual Skoll World

Forum on Social Entrepreneurship (Oxford).21 In this vein, the Schwab Foundation does not

pay out any material means and supports its fellows only ideationally by inviting them to the

World Economic Forum (Davos), offering them “unique opportunities (…) to connect with

corporate, political, academic, media and other leaders.”22

17 http://www.ashoka.org/search/fellows?page=1&country=LO, and http://www.waterparadigm.org/indexen.php?web=./home/homeen.html, 25 February 2011.

This support is an essential

contribution to the perception of the fellows as legitimate global players: „Membership of

Schwab provides certain legitimacy, but attending the [World Economic Forum] with a

national president can make a profound difference to how a social entrepreneur is viewed in

his or her home country” (Grenier 2008, 135).

18 http://www.ashoka.org/node/2841, 25 January 2011. 19 http://www.skollfoundation.org/entrepreneur/nina-smith/, 25 January 2011. 20 http://www.infodev.org/en/Article.319.html, 10 November 2010. 21 http://www.skollfoundation.org/approach/investment-strategy/, 10. November 2010. 22 http://www.schwabfound.org/sf/AboutUs/Whatdowedo/index.htm, 25 January 2010.

22

Furthermore, the support organizations contribute to generating identity for the SEs

themselves. They market their activities as success stories. People committed to a cause

hardly consider themselves a SE before being recognized as such (Grenier 2008, 129). “This

new definition [as SE], and the security such a role definition brings along, altered my entire

way of relating to and presenting me to clients and partners,” states Ashoka fellow Judy Korn

(Korn 2009, 47). Through networking activities in particular, the support organizations create

an identity generating community of SEs. They create an aura of celebrity and brand image

(Dacin et al. 2010, 12, 15).

While the people assigned as SEs usually first implement their innovative solutions in a

concrete local context – micro-credits in Bangladesh or the new water paradigm in Slovakia –

the support organizations aim to diffuse and scale-up their experiences in order to activate a

more fundamental, worldwide change – UN International Year of Microcredit 2005. In this

process, the SEs move from their local context and become global players. Frequently, they

are brought together with TNCs; for instance, the Grameen Bank cooperates with Danone,

one of the largest food-product corporations, Telenore, a Norwegian telecompany, and Veolia,

the world’s largest private water supplier (Muhammad 2009, 36-37).

By assigning single individuals as new SEs, organizations like Ashoka create the image of

charismatic heroes who provide examples of the kind of impact individuals can have within a

globalized world: “Ashoka envisions an Everyone A Changemaker world. A world that

responds quickly and effectively to social challenges, and where each individual has the

freedom, confidence and societal support to address any social problem and drive change.”23

Moreover, as already outlined above, in difference to norm and policy entrepreneurs, whose

influence is assessed in terms of influence in (international) politics, SEs are presented as

having direct impact on society, circumventing institutional politics. Upon closer inspection,

these assumptions (lonely hero, no need for politics) need to be questioned. Social

entrepreneurs in a narrow sense may be successful by themselves at an early stage of their

initiative (norm emergence) but, at least when it comes to scaling and norm cascade,

The supports organizations neglect the SE’s surrounding field and the significance of their

organizational platforms, whose significance scholars on norm and policy entrepreneurship

have continually emphasized (e.g. Grameen Bank has almost 25,000 employees and continues

its business after Yunus’ retreat in March 2011; The Big Issue is member of The International

Network of Streetpapers).

23 http://www.ashoka.org/visionmission, 28 January 2011.

23

institutional state politics tend to become a target of SEs, having implemented their new idea

in one place and aiming for its diffusion (Yunus provoked the UN to create the International

Year of Microcredits after implementing his idea in Bangladesh). Put differently, SEs, as

much as norm and policy entrepreneurs, tend to be particularly relevant at the beginning of an

international change process.

5. Conclusions

“I am a citizen and as a citizen I have the duty to do what I can,” stated Sting when asked

why he became involved with rainforest protection and the Kayapo cause (found in Frank

2010). In fact, social entrepreneurs are more than ordinary citizens or cosmopolites: they are

not only part of a world demos, they take agency on behalf of others when addressing

problems of public concern. While IR research analyzed individual agency – either in the

form of leadership or of norm or policy entrepreneurship – in terms of influence on

institutional politics, we need to realize that these new social entrepreneurs circumvent

institutional politics to a large extent, at least at an early stage of their action and success.

Private capital allows donors like the Gates to change things on the ground without public

means. SEs in a narrow sense, like Yunus and Bird, prove to be able to cause transformational

change through the market (and volunteers).

SEs take agency on behalf of others without being elected or hired by a citizenry or those

affected, i.e. they intervene at least to a large extent on self-account. Bill and Melinda Gates

take agency on behalf of others when they as US citizens transform the healthcare system of

African countries. They decide exclusively and largely independently from national leaders

(e.g. national health minister) or international organizations and programs (e.g. WHO,

UNDP). Bono demands debt relieve on behalf of the developing countries although he

himself is from Ireland. Yunus and Bird offer opportunities to marginalized people who

usually have no alternative (although publicly financed alternatives do exist in different

places; for instance, micro-credits for water access compared to free public water supply).

SEs provide examples of the kind of impact that individuals can have within a globalized

world. While Ashoka envisions an Everyone A Changemaker world, upon closer inspection,

this is not an inclusive everyone but in fact a very exclusive someone world (ironically,

Ashoka even trademarked this slogan). Only some people are able to become changemakers.

Individual agency in IR fundamentally depends on material resources, celebrity status and the

support of respective platforms and coalitions. The World Social Forum might symbolize an

24

inclusive, emancipator forum of (world) citizens or those affected (including the Kayapo who

represent themselves here),24

eventually constituting a political community beyond the nation-

state. The World Economic Forum, the Skoll Forum and diplomatic back room talks, to the

contrary, are exclusive events where entrepreneurs act on behalf of others without being

explicitly authorized to take agency by these people. While Sting or Klaus Schwab as world

citizens would be more or less ordinary participants among some ten thousand others at the

World Social Forum, Schwab especially enjoys an exclusive position at the hierarchically

organized World Economic Forum. The same holds true for Jeffrey Skoll at the Skoll Forum.

Different from those politicians and state negotiators who they meet, these people are not

subject to the rules of the two-level game. They can mainly follow their own interests and

priorities without being held accountable. Therefore, IR research should not dispatch

individual agency in IR as part of an idealistic every citizen’s world but consider the actual

significance of these some new powerful individuals.

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